A storage appliance is a type of storage server which operates on behalf of one or more clients to store and manage shared data in a set of mass storage devices, such as magnetic or optical storage based disks. The mass storage devices are typically organized as one or more groups of Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks (RAID). One configuration in which storage appliances can be used is a network attached storage (NAS) configuration. In a NAS configuration, a storage appliance can be implemented as a file server, or “filer” attached to a network, such as a local area network (LAN) or a corporate intranet. An example of such a storage appliance is any of the NetApp® Filer products made by Network Appliance, Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif. Alternatively, storage appliances can be used in a storage area network (SAN) environment. A SAN is a highly efficient network of interconnected, shared storage devices. In a SAN, the storage appliance may provide a remote host with block-level access to stored data.
A filer may be coupled to a network and may serve as a storage device for several users, or clients, of the network. For example, the filer may store user directories and files for a corporate network or other network, such as a LAN or a wide area network (WAN). Users of the network can each be assigned an individual directory in which they can store personal files. A user's directory can then be accessed from computers coupled to the network.
A system administrator can maintain the filer, ensuring that the filer continues to have adequate free space, that certain users are not monopolizing storage on the filer, etc. A typical Multi-Appliance Management Application (MMA) can be used to monitor the storage on the filer. An example of such an MMA is the DataFabric® Manager (DFM) products made by Network Appliance, Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif. The MMA may provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows the administrator to more easily observe the condition of the filer.
Using some conventional MMAs, the administrator may schedule a scan of a specific storage object on the filer to collect file-level information and/or statistics. Storage objects are logical units of storage within a single name space, such as a directory tree. One example of a storage object is a volume. However, conventional MMAs typically require administrators to provide the directory path via which the storage object is to be scanned. For large data storage systems maintained by multiple administrators, each administrator may not know the directory path of every storage object in the system. Furthermore, it is burdensome and inconvenient for the administrators to keep track of the current directory paths of all storage objects in the system. As a result, many administrators find the scanning tools provided by these conventional MMAs difficult to use.